


A Lovely Trick

by BigSciencyBrain



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigSciencyBrain/pseuds/BigSciencyBrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finals are over for Mac.  Challenge was - "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous." ~ Ingrid Bergman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lovely Trick

Fall semester finals at Hearst ended with an exhausted whimper. The smart, the heartbroken, and the dedicated were all equally shaky from the previous week of excessive caffeine consumption and left with no option beyond crawling back to their dorm rooms to collapse into a puddle of goo.

Cindy MacKensie made it as far as the parking lot outside her dorm. 

Equations were still bouncing around her otherwise empty brain like pin balls that wandered away from the arcade and now that she wasn’t staring the essay question in the face, she knew exactly how to answer it. Her dorm room would be empty, Parker had already gone home for the break, but if she went home she’d be bombarded with questions she didn’t want to answer and comfort food that would ruin her New Year’s resolution weeks in advance. Besides, her mother wasn’t expecting her until the weekend and it was only Thursday.

That left her with the driver’s seat of her car; the only place where no one would pester her but where she didn’t feel hideously lonely either. She briefly considered calling Veronica, but the idea of spending time in the wreckage Logan Echolls left behind wasn’t exactly rest and relaxation. While Veronica was valiant in her effort to appear unaffected by the break-up, Mac still tiptoed around the subject like it was a landmine. 

A loud rapping on the driver’s side window startled her out of her haze. When she looked up she saw Eli Navarro circling his finger in the universal sign language for roll the window down. If she’d been more than half-awake, she might have been annoyed that he was leaning against her car and making her move her exhausted body at all.

“You okay?” he asked. “Saw you slumped over the steering wheel like that. Looked like you might be having some trouble.”

Mac stared at him and kicked herself for being annoyed. “I’m fine. Just finished my finals, that’s all. I mean, I’m just tired.”

“How’d they go?”

“Excruciating. But I’m done now. That’s good,” she told him lamely. When he didn’t turn away or stop leaning against her car, she wondered if she’d fallen asleep mid conversation and missed something. 

“You gonna make it home or do I need to call you a cab?” He seemed amused by the prospect of her falling asleep at the wheel.

Frowning, she shook her head and pointed toward the dorm building at the other end of the resident parking lot. “I am home.”

“So you’re sitting in your car. This some new thing all the cool kids are doing? Rather than going out and getting wasted after finals, you just sit in your car.”

“I was tired of walking.” 

“Uh-huh.”

She bristled at his patronizing tone of voice. “Look, I just finished two pretty horrendous finals, both of which will determine my grade in the class and whether or not I’m accepted into my major. I really don’t need to be made fun of because I was too tired to walk to my room.”

“I’d offer to carry you but I’m pretty sure I’d get hit with sexual harassment. I do have a dolly I could run get, might be a little bumpy going up the stairs.” He nodded his head toward what she guessed was the location of the Physical Plant.

The mental image of holding onto a moving dolly while Weevil rolled it, and her, down the sidewalk and up the stairs was too ridiculous to maintain her scowl and she smiled in spite of herself. 

“I knew that smile was around here somewhere.” His smirk turned into a genuine grin and he stood up, pulling back from her window. “You got books you need carrying or am I just tagging along to make sure you don’t fall face down on the pavement?”

“You’re not, I don’t need an escort,” she protested. Since it was obvious that he was going to keep bugging her until she budged, she rolled the window back up and grabbed her bag before climbing out. “It’s one parking lot and a few stairs, I think I can manage by myself.” The only response she got was a shrug and rolling her eyes didn’t seem to faze him at all as he fell into step beside her.

“You like this whole college business?” he asked conversationally. “Seems to me like it’s a lot of work for a piece of paper.”

“A piece of paper that opens doors.”

“Nah, credits cards work better than paper. Just gotta know how to slide ‘em in right.” He winked at her when she glared at him. “That was a joke, chica. I take it none of your classes teach anything about having a sense of humor.”

“What is this? Annoying Samaritan Day?”

“If it is, no one told me. Does that mean I’m getting holiday hours?”

“You’re a regular comedian today,” she said sarcastically.

“I aim to please.”

She kept her mouth shut because her mind, obviously disgruntled at its mistreatment in the past weeks, was bombarding her with every possible double meaning those four words could have. Please what, please who, please how; all the things that Cindy MacKensie didn’t normally think about came tumbling out of their exile now that she was too tired to hold them in. And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to curl up on her twin bed with more than just a pillow and her headphones. To lie there and be warm in someone’s arms, with no thought other than the patterns she could find in the ceiling tiles or on the backs of her eyelids. 

“Whoa, there.” He stopped her from walking straight into the entrance door and held onto her arm as he opened it. “Maybe I should’ve gone for that dolly.”

“I’m fine,” she said automatically, even though she was exhausted to the point of feeling blurry and out of focus around the edges, like a photograph taken while life was rushing past her. 

Despite her best attempt to put one foot after the other and remember to not trip on the stairs, she stumbled twice more before reaching her dorm room. Her face was burning with the humiliation of not being able to walk like a normal human being by the time they reached her door. When her key finally slid into the lock, she almost sagged against the doorframe with relief.

Eli’s voice was soft and his hands were warm against her back. “Have you slept at all, chica?” 

“A couple days ago…I think.” The door was moving and she was pretty sure she wasn’t the one pushing it, but she couldn’t really tell. She was focused on the heat radiating from his hand as he steered her toward the bed. It felt like a ray of sunlight, a ray of not being alone, and she was reluctant to sit down because then it would go away and leave her cold again.

He turned her around and bodily had to sit her down on her bed. Shaking his head, he crouched down and untied her shoelaces so he could pull her shoes off. She wondered about the odds of him not thinking she was the biggest loser on earth and decided that calculating them would only be depressing.

“Why are you being nice to me?” she asked softly.

The expression on his face didn’t change enough for her to get a read on his reaction. Even though he cleared his throat, his voice was rough when he answered. “Because you needed it.”

“Veronica didn’t put you up to it?”

His eyebrow rose skeptically and he shook his head again. “Believe it or not, there is at least one guy in Neptune who isn’t wrapped around her little finger. And you’re looking at him.”

“You two seem…close.”

“We’ve got enough to blackmail each other for the rest of our lives, that’s for sure.”

“Then you haven’t,” she hesitated, feeling her face flush again. “There were rumors in high school. Of course, there were rumors about Veronica and pretty much every guy at Neptune High. Sometimes more than one. At a time. Like…you know.”

“I get it and no. Veronica and I were never involved like that.” He placed his hand over her knee so casually it might have been an everyday occurrence, looking up at her with his head tipped to the side. “Should I be asking you the same question? Not all those rumors included the male gender.”

She blinked at him several times. “You’re not serious.”

“I don’t know…you and V…that’s a combo I could get behind.”

She smacked his shoulder lightly and tried to stifle the fatigue-induced urge to giggle. “I will not be party to your girl on girl fantasies, Mister Navarro.”

“You’re in my nightmares about algebra too. If that helps.” 

“Surprisingly, not really. Just tell me I don’t have snakes in my hair or anything gross like that. I don’t, right?”

“No snakes involved.” He eased out of his crouch and sat down beside her on the bed. 

The addition of his weight sunk the mattress enough to tip her toward him. Their shoulders bumped together, the contact effectively squashing any desire she might have had to laugh. It felt strange, reckless, and comfortable at the same time. Parker would have given her the look and found an excuse to leave the room for hours. She wasn’t sure what Veronica’s reaction would have been, but she didn’t think it would have been good.

He interrupted her worrying. “You gonna fall asleep on me?”

“That would be rude of me, wouldn’t it?” 

“Nah, you’ve earned it.”

“Only if I passed.” She let her head loll against his shoulder and closed her eyes. The point of no return was probably back at the door he’d stopped her from walking into and since neither Parker nor Veronica were standing in the room, she didn’t particularly care what their reactions would be.

“I should go.” He cleared his throat again. “Let you sleep.”

“I can sleep right here. Just try not to move too much.”

“Mac.”

“Really. I can sleep sitting up. Spent the whole semester practicing.” She yawned, remembering too late to cover her mouth. “Sorry.”

“At least lay down, crazy girl.”

She was too tired to protest or do much more than tumble after him as he twisted away and eased her down onto the bed. Her brain was already halfway to Neverland by the time Weevil lifted her legs up onto the bed and pulled her blanket over her. She was relieved when she felt him sit back down, shivering a little as he brushed her hair away from her face.

“You gonna be okay?”

“Without a guard dog watching over me?” She opened her eyes just enough to see him. “I don’t know. There are some scary doors out there. I hear they close all by themselves when you’re not watching.”

“You gonna be okay if I stay?”

“I’m much too tired to parse that question into the appropriate double meanings.”

“You got a dictionary handy?” He made a show of looking around the room. “Otherwise, you’re gonna have to use smaller words.”

“No more than two syllables, I promise.”

“And what am I supposed to do while you get in touch with your inner Sleeping Beauty?”

She adjusted her pillow, trying to find the most comfortable position possible. “Did you just call me a princess?”

“You are outta your mind.” He pulled his hand away.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she blurted out. 

All the filters in her brain that stopped her from saying and doing ridiculous things had apparently short-circuited, leaving her fearless in her stupidity. He didn’t stand up but he was frowning and that meant conflict. Conflict about whether or not she’d lost her mind or maybe conflict about how to tell her nicely that he needed to go wash his hair. Pushing up into a sitting position, she took a deep breath before beginning what was bound to be yet another stupid thing. She was cut short by a kiss; a gentle, surprising kiss that took the deep breath and all her words away. 

She was red as a beet when he pulled away. To avoid eye contact, she laid back down, closed her eyes, and turned toward the wall. It felt a little less crazy and a little less embarrassing that way. She could feel him shifting on the mattress and hear vague sounds she couldn’t identify. But he wasn’t leaving. The mattress shifted again; as soon as the heat from his body hit her back, the muscles in her shoulders and neck began to relax. 

There was nothing shy about his touch when he wrapped his arm around her waist, their bodies pressing together, but there was nothing threatening either. Just comforting warmth and knowing that she wasn’t alone. That was enough for her to finally let go of the nightmare of finals and let sleep creep in.


End file.
